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Yes, here on city data but I am basically talking about face to face interaction in my post.
But you realize your posts have us all thinking you are trolling, making up stories for reactions. You make stuff up and get caught in lie after lie. Time to find a new hobby.
MOST PEOPLE I know are very concerned what other people think about them. Their greatest fear is being called weird, odd, flaky or strange. As a result, they do every thing they can to be conservative in their appearance, manner, bearing and conversational style.
As I get older, I bore easily and am enjoying being eccentric (or weird if you want to use the non politically correct term.) Now that I am retired and have enough money to survive comfortably for the rest of my life, I don't fear rejection or being an outcast any more. I can be me.
I used to try so hard to fit in with self important, or influential neighbors and relatives. I did not want to be considered weird or lose their respect. (Of course I am weird, I just did my best to hide it.)
Now I have thrown caution to the wind and now act more like my real self. One thing I like to do is say unusual things or think outside the box to stir up the status quo. Then I like to see how people react. I am not being mean or difficult, just different than they are use to.
Can you relate? Observations from arm chair psychologists?
Do it in a very poor accent; it's even funnier!
Or you could just follow this list!
This is why women should not take men shopping against their will.
After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, like most men, I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out. Equally unfortunately, my wife is like most women - - she loves to browse. Yesterday my dear wife received the following letter from the local Wal-Mart.
Dear Mrs. Samsel,
Over the past six months, your husband has been causing quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to ban both of you from the store. Our complaints against Mr.Samsel are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras.
1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in people's carts when they weren't looking.
2 . July 2 : Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.
3. July 7: Made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women's restroom.
4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, 'Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away.'
5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&M's on layaway.
6. August 14: Moved a 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.
7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told other shoppers he'd invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department.
8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed, 'Why can't you people just leave me alone?'
9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a mirror while he picked his nose.
10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked t he clerk where the antidepressants were.
11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme.
12. October 6: In the auto department, he practiced his 'Madonna look' by using different sizes of funnels.
13. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled 'PICK ME! PICK ME!'
14. October 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed a fetal position and screamed 'OH NO! IT'S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!'
And last, but not least.
15. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile, then yelled very loudly, 'Hey! There's no toilet paper in here!'
So you KNOW there's no way he could be in the wrong!
I think MoNative was merely pointing out the apparent contradiction of the claim made in that post (he has a very mainstream personality) with the claim made in this OP (he's now "enjoying being eccentric"), not implying what you said above
As for the OP, yeah, I do in fact derive great enjoyment from making comments that I deem to be "intelligently odd" to people I don't know, but only when I'm also around people who I know will appreciate the results. Which means...I rarely say off-the-wall things these days, because my best audiences are scattered throughout the US/world these days. (Plus I feel like I've "matured" considerably in the interim, but I still feel like this former favorite pastime of mine could/would/will be rekindled under the right circumstances). It's been a while since I've met someone with whom I felt enough of a connection where I could quickly begin, well, being myself I guess. Or at least being that now-nearly-forgotten part of myself.
In Buffalo there used to be free summer concerts every Thursday that were held in a centrally located plaza downtown called Lafayette Square. This concert series to which I'm alluding has not been discontinued, but the venue has changed to a more "traditional" amphitheatre-ish setting along Lake Erie, and this venue change has certainly succeeding in transforming the social dynamics of the gathering--decidedly for the worse, in my opinion. Acoustically, the current setup is superior, but at the Square the logistics were such that it felt more like a citywide block party, which to me was overall a much more interesting experience. Whereas the music and I suppose the physical setting are now the chief draws of the event, the overall atmosphere used to be the weekly lure for me and many others--you'd attend weekly and pay attention to the music on the occasions where you happened to care about the bands playing, which in my case might've been about 35% of the time.
Anyway, the previous paragraph was a preface to my point that I used to revel in the random interactions that the Lafayette Square concert format tended to promote ("promote" being not nearly a strong enough word there--"force" might be merited). Basically my modus operandi for years at this event was to get drunk and attempt observational humor (of varying degrees of harmlessness/maliciousness) at the expense of passers-by for the sake of entertaining whatever group of friends/acquaintances/unknowns were hanging out with us that week. Depending on the level of malice/humor the unsuspecting recipient of the comment would often be entertained, as well--my goal was typically to achieve that outcome. All those comments would be improvised, and my typical companions looked forward to what I'd say once I got a few cheap beers in me. I tended to seek out a rather even distribution of roughly "normal"-appearing people and "outsiders"--there tended to be a healthy mix of all sectors of society during the mid-aughts heyday of this event (I naturally retained the conviction that I defied such easy "normal"/"outsider" binary categorization that I may have been guilty of applying to others at the time--but in reality, I always felt more the outsider than anything else).
On a few of these concert nights, though, there were premeditated plans in place to promote interaction with strangers. Once I assembled a "street team" passing out flyers for a short-lived band idea that a friend and I had. Said (former) friend was one of the more creatively eccentric people I've ever met and likely ever will meet, and when one combines that trait/those traits with the fact that he was, not all that surprisingly, incredibly uncomfortable in his dealings with the masses (my own severe and sometimes-downright-crippling anxiety was not so much socially induced as it was induced by other factors...it was almost never induced while drinking among friends at my favorite weekly event, anyway), hilarity (or what seemed like hilarity to me eight years ago) was sure to ensue on a day like that. It is important to note that said friend and I both viewed the "flyer campaign" as more of a front to approach people and say random things than to honestly promote a band that never really materialized anyway (we did record a few songs on two different occasions, but). Uncomfortable as my friend may have been in the average encounter, I think he relished the opportunity to make the sorts of obscure references and sarcastic comments (things that he typically refrained from saying due to fear of what sort of response they'd elicit) within the relative security of a larger group situation (most of those group members being allies of his to some degree or another).
Another concert night, I happened to have been reading "Innumeracy" by John Allen Paulos several hours prior to the gathering. Said book mentions/explains an "illusion of probability" of sorts that tends to trip up the uninitiated (I was later embarrassed by how long it took for me to recognize the logic behind it (half an hour, probably--I kept stubbornly clinging to my original erroneous view of the situation)). Here is how it works: take three cards, one red on both sides, one black on both sides, and one that is red on one side and black on the other. Put these cards in an opaque container, shake the container, pick one out at random, and show the card to an observer/potential victim of your scam. Let's say the selected card has a black side showing. Obviously we can rule out that it's the card that's red on both sides; it is either the red-black or the black-black. I then proceed to offer to bet my observer regarding which card it is--I casually offer to take the all-black, while "you" my volunteer can take the red-black option. After all, 50/50 shot no matter which option you select, right? Well, not so much, as I have two potential chances to be "right" while he has one--casino table games have better odds than this 2:1 fleecing.
After reading (and eventually actually understanding) this simple-in-retrospect reasoning, inspiration about a potential application of this game struck, and I called my most trusted weekly concert companion and asked if he'd be willing to approach people at that night's concert with a request to participate in the "Innumeracy" game. I was almost certain this friend would be game for such a stunt, and he was. I marked a few index cards and put them in a paper bag and brought them to the event. We'd approach people and show them all three cards and ask them if they wanted to bet a beer ticket on our proposition (red-black v "the house's" monochromatic option). Interestingly, while a few expressed skepticism about the prop, it was always because of concern that we were visually deceiving them, that we literally had a trick up our sleeve...no one challenged it on the basis of not wanting to be a 2:1 underdog. Now, for those five people who DID take us up on the offer (two of whom wound up "winning the bet"), we'd explain it afterwards...those people were all cool with it, even the three who lost their $2.50 ticket. One appreciative participant asked my friend and I if we were statistics majors. No one in our admittedly small sample played the role of the stats major himself/herself and saw the inherent disadvantage that he was incurring by accepting the red-black burden.
If I were to replicate that experiment now, I wonder how people in various circumstances might react, how compliant they might be with the attempted hoodwinking. Hell, I forget what the original context of its being mentioned in "Innumeracy" was--I don't recall whether or not John Allen Paulos mentioned that X% of people were willing to take the sucker bet in a given experiment that incorporated this gimmick. I can only report on my own experimental results; no meta-analysis yet available, heh.
Anyway, good times. Many other times like the aforementioned were enjoyed at those weekly concerts. Not even going to get into the week where I focused on conducting market research on my product prototype of a belt "open container" holster. Perhaps to mordant's chagrin, I'm not even going to begin to recount the frequent banter with banner-waving evangelicals that occurred on the periphery of the Square scene (they stayed on the other side of the metro rail, seemingly perpetually praying that the next train would be the one to do god's work by derailing and careening into the shameless throng of Sodomites across the way). I do look forward to future immersion in situations where I can be similarly playful without fear of reproach and with knowledge that my efforts will not go unappreciated; it's been too long. It won't ever be quite the same as Thursday at the Square circa 2004-2007, but it doesn't have to be to serve its purpose for the continued survival of the organism currently typing this post. Over the past fifteen years or so, I've relied on laughter more than any single other "thing" to endure the painful absurdity of existence, and ultimately I do not want to "progress" to the point where I will be too non-ignorant to laugh, whatever/whoever the collateral damage of such a resolution might be. In other words, I vow to you, I'm Retired Now, that there will be a renaissance of unsolicited and unexpected Matt Marcinkiewicz-made comments sometime in the near future. We're on the cusp of a rebirth, and it shall be subjectively temporarily glorious.
MOST PEOPLE I know are very concerned what other people think about them. Their greatest fear is being called weird, odd, flaky or strange. As a result, they do every thing they can to be conservative in their appearance, manner, bearing and conversational style.
As I get older, I bore easily and am enjoying being eccentric (or weird if you want to use the non politically correct term.) Now that I am retired and have enough money to survive comfortably for the rest of my life, I don't fear rejection or being an outcast any more. I can be me.
I used to try so hard to fit in with self important, or influential neighbors and relatives. I did not want to be considered weird or lose their respect. (Of course I am weird, I just did my best to hide it.)
Now I have thrown caution to the wind and now act more like my real self. One thing I like to do is say unusual things or think outside the box to stir up the status quo. Then I like to see how people react. I am not being mean or difficult, just different than they are use to.
Can you relate? Observations from arm chair psychologists?
Why do you find their reaction so interesting? Is this a study in human psychology?
Well, from this armchair psychologist, no need to
state the obvious. All of your posts clearly demonstrate this.
Bingo, sista!
A waste of time for me. I have a lawyer friend now 64, picture Ernest Hem,
says ridiculous and often rude things playing mind games to get a reaction.
It seems to be a certain 'type' of immaturity, to me...being a couch psychological
examiner, that I am.
(Couldn't give u a rep, tho I spread em around all over the place!)
It's called an instigater. My friend did this to stir the pot and get things out in the open. She was funny and still is. But I watch what I say to her.lol
I think MoNative was merely pointing out the apparent contradiction of the claim made in that post (he has a very mainstream personality) with the claim made in this OP (he's now "enjoying being eccentric"), not implying what you said above
As for the OP, yeah, I do in fact derive great enjoyment from making comments that I deem to be "intelligently odd" to people I don't know, but only when I'm also around people who I know will appreciate the results. Which means...I rarely say off-the-wall things these days, because my best audiences are scattered throughout the US/world these days. (Plus I feel like I've "matured" considerably in the interim, but I still feel like this former favorite pastime of mine could/would/will be rekindled under the right circumstances). It's been a while since I've met someone with whom I felt enough of a connection where I could quickly begin, well, being myself I guess. Or at least being that now-nearly-forgotten part of myself.
In Buffalo there used to be free summer concerts every Thursday that were held in a centrally located plaza downtown called Lafayette Square. This concert series to which I'm alluding has not been discontinued, but the venue has changed to a more "traditional" amphitheatre-ish setting along Lake Erie, and this venue change has certainly succeeding in transforming the social dynamics of the gathering--decidedly for the worse, in my opinion. Acoustically, the current setup is superior, but at the Square the logistics were such that it felt more like a citywide block party, which to me was overall a much more interesting experience. Whereas the music and I suppose the physical setting are now the chief draws of the event, the overall atmosphere used to be the weekly lure for me and many others--you'd attend weekly and pay attention to the music on the occasions where you happened to care about the bands playing, which in my case might've been about 35% of the time.
Anyway, the previous paragraph was a preface to my point that I used to revel in the random interactions that the Lafayette Square concert format tended to promote ("promote" being not nearly a strong enough word there--"force" might be merited). Basically my modus operandi for years at this event was to get drunk and attempt observational humor (of varying degrees of harmlessness/maliciousness) at the expense of passers-by for the sake of entertaining whatever group of friends/acquaintances/unknowns were hanging out with us that week. Depending on the level of malice/humor the unsuspecting recipient of the comment would often be entertained, as well--my goal was typically to achieve that outcome. All those comments would be improvised, and my typical companions looked forward to what I'd say once I got a few cheap beers in me. I tended to seek out a rather even distribution of roughly "normal"-appearing people and "outsiders"--there tended to be a healthy mix of all sectors of society during the mid-aughts heyday of this event (I naturally retained the conviction that I defied such easy "normal"/"outsider" binary categorization that I may have been guilty of applying to others at the time--but in reality, I always felt more the outsider than anything else).
On a few of these concert nights, though, there were premeditated plans in place to promote interaction with strangers. Once I assembled a "street team" passing out flyers for a short-lived band idea that a friend and I had. Said (former) friend was one of the more creatively eccentric people I've ever met and likely ever will meet, and when one combines that trait/those traits with the fact that he was, not all that surprisingly, incredibly uncomfortable in his dealings with the masses (my own severe and sometimes-downright-crippling anxiety was not so much socially induced as it was induced by other factors...it was almost never induced while drinking among friends at my favorite weekly event, anyway), hilarity (or what seemed like hilarity to me eight years ago) was sure to ensue on a day like that. It is important to note that said friend and I both viewed the "flyer campaign" as more of a front to approach people and say random things than to honestly promote a band that never really materialized anyway (we did record a few songs on two different occasions, but). Uncomfortable as my friend may have been in the average encounter, I think he relished the opportunity to make the sorts of obscure references and sarcastic comments (things that he typically refrained from saying due to fear of what sort of response they'd elicit) within the relative security of a larger group situation (most of those group members being allies of his to some degree or another).
Another concert night, I happened to have been reading "Innumeracy" by John Allen Paulos several hours prior to the gathering. Said book mentions/explains an "illusion of probability" of sorts that tends to trip up the uninitiated (I was later embarrassed by how long it took for me to recognize the logic behind it (half an hour, probably--I kept stubbornly clinging to my original erroneous view of the situation)). Here is how it works: take three cards, one red on both sides, one black on both sides, and one that is red on one side and black on the other. Put these cards in an opaque container, shake the container, pick one out at random, and show the card to an observer/potential victim of your scam. Let's say the selected card has a black side showing. Obviously we can rule out that it's the card that's red on both sides; it is either the red-black or the black-black. I then proceed to offer to bet my observer regarding which card it is--I casually offer to take the all-black, while "you" my volunteer can take the red-black option. After all, 50/50 shot no matter which option you select, right? Well, not so much, as I have two potential chances to be "right" while he has one--casino table games have better odds than this 2:1 fleecing.
After reading (and eventually actually understanding) this simple-in-retrospect reasoning, inspiration about a potential application of this game struck, and I called my most trusted weekly concert companion and asked if he'd be willing to approach people at that night's concert with a request to participate in the "Innumeracy" game. I was almost certain this friend would be game for such a stunt, and he was. I marked a few index cards and put them in a paper bag and brought them to the event. We'd approach people and show them all three cards and ask them if they wanted to bet a beer ticket on our proposition (red-black v "the house's" monochromatic option). Interestingly, while a few expressed skepticism about the prop, it was always because of concern that we were visually deceiving them, that we literally had a trick up our sleeve...no one challenged it on the basis of not wanting to be a 2:1 underdog. Now, for those five people who DID take us up on the offer (two of whom wound up "winning the bet"), we'd explain it afterwards...those people were all cool with it, even the three who lost their $2.50 ticket. One appreciative participant asked my friend and I if we were statistics majors. No one in our admittedly small sample played the role of the stats major himself/herself and saw the inherent disadvantage that he was incurring by accepting the red-black burden.
If I were to replicate that experiment now, I wonder how people in various circumstances might react, how compliant they might be with the attempted hoodwinking. Hell, I forget what the original context of its being mentioned in "Innumeracy" was--I don't recall whether or not John Allen Paulos mentioned that X% of people were willing to take the sucker bet in a given experiment that incorporated this gimmick. I can only report on my own experimental results; no meta-analysis yet available, heh.
Anyway, good times. Many other times like the aforementioned were enjoyed at those weekly concerts. Not even going to get into the week where I focused on conducting market research on my product prototype of a belt "open container" holster. Perhaps to mordant's chagrin, I'm not even going to begin to recount the frequent banter with banner-waving evangelicals that occurred on the periphery of the Square scene (they stayed on the other side of the metro rail, seemingly perpetually praying that the next train would be the one to do god's work by derailing and careening into the shameless throng of Sodomites across the way). I do look forward to future immersion in situations where I can be similarly playful without fear of reproach and with knowledge that my efforts will not go unappreciated; it's been too long. It won't ever be quite the same as Thursday at the Square circa 2004-2007, but it doesn't have to be to serve its purpose for the continued survival of the organism currently typing this post. Over the past fifteen years or so, I've relied on laughter more than any single other "thing" to endure the painful absurdity of existence, and ultimately I do not want to "progress" to the point where I will be too non-ignorant to laugh, whatever/whoever the collateral damage of such a resolution might be. In other words, I vow to you, I'm Retired Now, that there will be a renaissance of unsolicited and unexpected Matt Marcinkiewicz-made comments sometime in the near future. We're on the cusp of a rebirth, and it shall be subjectively temporarily glorious.
People probably tune you out like I skipped reading this boring post. Zzzzzzz.....
Maybe you can ask the guy who posted the thread "I like to punch people in the face that stir the status quo to see how they respond".
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